Autumn Dreams

by Sharon McGregor

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Maggie put on her Sunday dress, and after breakfast, everyone except Ray climbed into the car. He’d decided to stay home. His leg was bothering him this morning. Maggie was surprised to see Marshall at the wheel. His mood, or perhaps his opinion of her, seemed to have improved overnight. His smile was brief, but he greeted her with a pleasant sounding, “Good morning.”

  The church was homey and friendly as Ellen introduced Maggie to the local families. She was sure she’d never remember all the names, but she tried. They would be important to her. Most of them were parents of her pupils.

  “That’s Gary and Gerry,” said Emma, tugging at Maggie’s skirt. “They’re twins.” Not only did they look identical, but they also dressed nearly the same. “They’ll try to trick you in school. Gerry is no good in arithmetic, so Gary answers his questions.” Then she grinned. “I can tell the difference. I’ll point them out to you tomorrow before school starts.”

  Maggie squeezed the hand of her co-conspirator. “Thanks.”

  “It’s a short walk up the hill to the school,” Ellen said. “Emma can go back with Marshall, and we’ll walk home, if that’s okay with you.”

  Ellen’s pregnancy didn’t seem to slow her down. She led the way up the dirt road at a fast clip.

  The one-room school was typical of its kind. A faded white, it sat on the brow of the hill with trees around it. A barn had been built in the far corner of the lot for those who rode horses to school, and two outhouses were located in the back.

  “Not much to see, really,” Ellen said. “The cloakrooms are in the back. I think there’s a register in the desk with the children’s names. That old piano needs tuning, but it will have to do for now. Do you play?”

  “A little.” Maggie had been a bit of a shirker at her lessons, not like her sister, Dora, who was quite accomplished.

  “Ray or one of the bigger boys can start the stove for you in the mornings when winter comes.”

  Maggie decided forthrightness would probably get her the best results. She took a deep breath and plunged in. “Why does your brother dislike me?”

  Ellen hesitated. “It’s not you. It’s just that you’re the new teacher.”

  “He has a problem with education?”

  Ellen sighed. “Marshall spent a lot of time here last year when Ray had a bout of pneumonia. Poor Ray hasn’t had a lucky year. When Marshall and Stella met, it looked as though they were meant for each other. She was pretty and lively. Actually, she looked a lot like you. I think that’s where the problem starts.”

  “Go on,” she prompted when Ellen paused.

  “Well, Marshall fell for her. Then, without warning, she disappeared. Right before the end of the school term. We had to get a substitute to finish the year. A man she’d known before she came here showed up out of the blue, and she went away with him. She left a letter for me, but nothing for Marshall. He was disappointed at the way she ended it, I think, more than anything.”

  “But why does that make him hate me? I didn’t do anything to him.”

  “I think that’s the point. He wants to make sure you don’t have the chance.”

  Maggie let the significance of that settle.

  “We’d better get home,” Ellen said. “I left dinner ready. It’s just cold cuts and salad, but I’m sure they’re all starving by now.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Ellen said, “We can take a shortcut across the fields.”

  They skirted a field of wheat nearly ripe and ready for the harvesting crew that would soon make the rounds. A fenced pasture ran along the other side. A roan cow tinkled her bell at them as she lazed in the afternoon sun, chewing her cud. They approached the farmyard by crossing a high-plank bridge over a shallow creek, and then they walked up the hill to the barnyard.

  Ellen opened the barn door, and Maggie followed her in. “I left my apron in here this morning,” Ellen said, taking it off a nail on the wall. She smiled at Maggie. “I know you’re nervous around horses. How do you feel about cattle?”

  Maggie blushed. She hadn’t realized she was so transparent—or maybe Marshall had passed on his verdict about her fears at the train station.

  “I’m fine around all other animals. Only horses frighten me. I don’t remember, but Mom says I was scared by a horse at the fair once, and she thinks that’s the reason.”

  “You must miss your family.”

  “Sometimes. Well, most of the time, really. My sister, Dora, and I love each other when we’re apart, but when we’re together, we have our differences.”

  “That sounds like families everywhere. I have only the one brother, and I’m glad Marshall settled in Timber. He’s a short drive away when we need him, which seems to be often lately. I hope next year is a better one for our family.”

  “What does he do in Timber that he can just leave?” Maggie knew the minute she asked the question that she was being impertinent, but she bit her lip and waited. However, Ellen didn’t seem to take offense.

  “Marshall and a friend of his, Joshua Taylor, have a lumberyard and building center. Joshua is quite happy to look after things when Marshall comes to help us. He’d do the same if the tables were turned.”

  When they got to the house, Emma and Ray had managed to set the table between them, and Marshall was slicing leftover roast for the cold lunch. Potato salad and coleslaw finished the meal. Maggie couldn’t help but notice the way Marshall lifted his head quickly when she came in. She wondered if she was mistaken when she thought she saw admiration in his gaze. Then he flashed a smile and went back to his slicing.

  After dinner, they all relaxed in their own Sunday-afternoon way. Ray took a western novel and read and snoozed in the backyard. Ellen sat listening to the radio as she caught up with mending. Emma took off with Trigger, the family dog, for parts unknown, and Maggie went to her room to start a letter home. Marshall, well, heaven only knew what he did to unwind.

  She tried to picture him relaxing with a novel like Ray, or listening to music as his sister did, or out walking with Emma. None of it seemed to fit. Maggie wasn’t sure she liked the way her thoughts lingered on the handsome, taciturn Marshall.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next morning was the first day of school for both Maggie and Emma. It was a bright sunny morning, and the walk to school was full of questions from Emma about Maggie’s family.

  Then Maggie turned the tables, asking, “Do you think it’s going to be a lot of fun to have a baby brother or sister?”

  Emma’s expression turned somber. “I hope it’s a girl!” she said with considerable force.

  “So you can do things together? My sister, Dora, and I had lots of fun, but we quarreled too.”

  “No. So Daddy will still love me.”

  Maggie was stunned into silence. After several moments she said, “Your father will love you no matter—”

  “No, he won’t. If it’s a boy he won’t care about me anymore.” She suddenly ran ahead, kicking up gravel with quick thrusts of her shoes. When she finally slowed for Maggie to catch up, she had switched back to the inquisitive, impish Emma again.

  There was no time to pursue the matter as they were at the school gate, but Maggie wondered what on earth could have caused Emma to think her father’s love was conditional. Maybe she should talk it over with Ellen.

  Maggie set up her desk while Emma scanned the small library along the south wall under the windows, looking for books she might be able to read. If her boasting the night before was true, she had long ago learned her alphabet and knew simple words. Maggie hoped the rest of her pupils would be as quick to learn.

  Emma pointed outside as the pupils began to arrive. “See, there are the twins. Gary is the one in front, and Gerry is behind him.”

  Maggie watched the boys set their bikes along the wall, noticing that the first one, Gary, had caught the leg of his pants in his bicycle chain. As he pulled it away, the material tore somewhat. She smiled and knew she’d be ab
le to tell them apart for one day at least.

  Sure enough, when she called on Gerry to come to the blackboard to do some sums, the one she had pegged as Gary, due to the tear in his trouser leg, stood up.

  “Not you, Gary,” Maggie said. “I’m asking Gerry.” Both boys looked at her but Gerry stood up and came to the front.

  “How did you know?” he asked in a whisper.

  “It’s easy to tell you apart.” She shrugged. No sense in destroying the mystique. She now had their respect, at least temporarily.

  As the day went on, she learned a little about each of her students and started to plan how she could help each one to learn. She even had a chance to study the twins when they weren’t looking and realized Gary had a large freckle on the right side of his nose, but Gerry didn’t. Also, Gerry had a small mole on the side of his neck just below his left ear. Now she would know them for the rest of the year.

  On the walk home, Emma talked non-stop about the school day, and how she was going to go down the big slide all by herself the next day. No mention of siblings, and Maggie was happy about that because she wasn’t sure where to go with the subject.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Maggie changed in her bedroom and wrote a few more lines in her letter, before going downstairs to ask Ellen if she could help with supper.

  “It’s all in hand,” Ellen said. “But you could slip out to the barn and let Marshall know it will be ready in about half an hour. He loses track of time.”

  “I’ll go, I’ll go,” Emma said.

  “No, you won’t, miss. I asked you a long time ago to change into your play clothes, but you’re still in your school dress. That is not going into the barn.”

  Outside, Maggie stood in the barn doorway, watching for a moment as Marshall threw forkfuls of soiled straw onto the stoneboat. It was a warm day, and his shirt hung on a wooden peg on the wall. Maggie wasn’t used to seeing a man’s naked torso. When her father came home from the hardware store where he worked, he always took off his jacket and loosened his tie, but that was as casual as he got.

  She looked on in admiration as each muscle moved and realigned when Marshall lifted straw. She felt unfamiliar warmth in her own body. She knew from the way his shoulders tightened that he was aware of her presence.

  “Ellen says supper will be ready in a half hour,” she said.

  “I figured.” He stopped briefly and stood, fork in hand, one foot resting on its shoulder, a slight smile pulling the right side of his mouth upward. “Is there more?”

  “You used to live here, right?”

  “It was our family farm.”

  “Your parents aren’t still living?”

  “No.” He pointed through the open north door to a hillside. “My father was cultivating that hillside when the tractor wheel hit a large rock and threw it off balance. The tractor rolled over on him. He was dead before help came. Mom died a year later. Farming isn’t all baby calves and collecting eggs, you know. It’s a hard life.”

  “Why didn’t you stay on the farm?”

  “Do you always ask so many questions? If you want to make yourself useful, grab a fork.” His eyes traveled over her from head to toe, sending a shiver down her back. “On second thought, you’d better not. Those shoes weren’t made for shoveling manure. Wouldn’t want to soil them.” He turned dismissively back to his work.

  She flushed as she felt her anger rise at his off-handedness and marched past him, skirting the manure Marshall was throwing on the growing pile. Earlier, she’d seen a pair of rubber boots by the corner stall. She pulled off her shoes and pushed her feet into the boots—a little big, but they’d do. She reached for a fork hanging on the barn wall, aware of his stillness as he stopped to watch her.

  “Not that one, that’s for clean hay. Take the one next to it.”

  She lifted the shorter, heavier manure fork and tentatively shoved it into a pile of damp, smelly straw. As she lifted, most of it fell off the tines, but she managed to fling some of it onto the stone boat. The second forkful went better. Marshall had turned his back, but she knew by the way his shoulders moved that he was laughing at her.

  She’d show him. She closed her nose to the stench. Did anyone ever get used to the smell of manure?

  Oh, Dora, if you could only see me now.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Maggie settled comfortably into her new school. She didn’t seem to have any problem children, now that the twins thought she had special powers. She had one slow learner, but was gratified to see that the others helped him along rather than teasing or bullying him. Small communities stuck together.

  One of her grade-eight girls, Susan, the oldest in a family of five, acted as substitute mother to the younger ones, and helped Maggie whenever she needed a second pair of hands or eyes. Teaching eight grades at the same time required a special kind of organizational skill. She kept grades one and two occupied with drawing and creative work to keep their hands busy while she helped the higher grades concentrate on arithmetic or English. The older students needed to have plenty to occupy them when she concentrated on the younger ones. Idle hands…

  Everyone enjoyed story time at the end of the day, but she had to find a story that pleased all grades. A family adventure series seemed to fit the bill as the main characters were both genders and ages they could all relate to.

  * * *

  Harvest time had begun in the area, and the threshing gangs assembled. At the moment, they were working the quarter-section of the Thornhill farm.

  Maggie was ready to help pregnant Ellen with all the pie and cake making, cooking, and cleanup involved in feeding a hungry gang of threshers. She used to spend part of her summers at her Uncle Robert’s farm and loved the hustle and bustle that came with haying season. She discovered harvesting was even busier.

  Marshall provided the Thornhill contribution to the threshing that year. Ray was able to help out some with the thresher and tractor, but couldn’t manage to go out with the horses and rack to pick up the stooks of grain. He fretted at his limitations, anxious to do more than he could with his cast and crutches.

  “There, that should hold them for a while.” Ellen set a chocolate cake, still in the pan, on top of the box filled with cheese, egg, and meat sandwiches. A pot of coffee and a large container of icy-cold lemonade finished the washtub full of food set to go out to the threshers. “Are you sure you can manage?”

  Ellen had been working at the stove all day while Maggie had been at school. She looked tired and flushed. Maggie wished she could be of more help, but the threshing gang would be done here before the weekend.

  “Of course,” said Maggie. “I just take the truck over the bridge and through to the north field. I don’t think, with all the noise, I can miss the thresher.” She grinned and between them, they hoisted the washtub into the back of the old truck.

  Maggie drove slowly over the rough track, not wanting to jostle the coffee and drink containers too much. She’d never watched a threshing machine at work before. As she rounded the corner past a grove of poplars, she could see clouds of chaff swirling in the breeze.

  A team of horses stood hitched to a rack as the driver threw sheaves of grain into the thresher. Another man was in charge of guiding them through. Ray was moving a gasoline container away from the tractor while balancing on one crutch. He sat down on a folding chair and waved at her.

  The farmer who had been unloading the rack came over to the truck, gave her a quick greeting, took a large swig of the lemonade, and then loaded up a paper plate with sandwiches and cake. Threshing certainly gave the men an appetite.

  As she waited for each of the men to come for food, Maggie discovered that from this distance she could admire the muscular beauty of the horses without experiencing heart-stopping fear. They didn’t seem as awe-inspiring as they stood still and sweaty, taking their turn to rest, while flicking their tails at flies that settled on their wide backs and damp flanks.

  She didn’t want to admit she was waitin
g for Marshall’s arrival, but she knew that was what kept her eyes scanning the field for his team. It wasn’t long before he pulled up. She could picture him flinging sheaves and how he’d look without the shirt he was now wearing—each movement graceful and fluid as it had been in the barn.

  When it was his turn at the food, he actually smiled at her before choosing a pile of sandwiches. She didn’t know of any other way to reply to a smile than to return it, and then he was away again before she could think of anything to say. Wordlessness was not a common situation for Maggie, and she wasn’t too sure she liked being uncertain around Marshall.

  On the other hand, Marshall seemed to find her diverting. Once he’d stopped disapproving of her, his manner had changed to one of constant amusement. He also seemed to have stopped avoiding her. She didn’t know if she found this flattering or annoying. She had the feeling he was trying to catch her out in some way. It would help if a little conversation was included in their encounters. Then maybe she would have some idea of what he was thinking.

  The washtub was empty when she turned the truck toward home. The gang would soon wear off their lunch and be ready for a huge supper that evening. She’d help Ellen with the meal and maybe convince her to sit for a bit.

  Emma was washing dishes and setting them on the towel-covered table to drain. There was more water on Emma than on the dishes, but everyone had a job to do during harvest time. Maggie knew Emma would have preferred coming with her to the field. She’d sulked for a moment before tucking into her own chores.

  Watching the huge plates of food disappear at supper was almost magical—refilled and emptied again. After dessert, the men lingered over coffee while the women cleaned up. It was dark now and their rest would be a short one with another hard day of work facing them tomorrow. Sometimes, if bad weather threatened, they would thresh after dark to get a job finished, but tonight they were all ready for a well-earned sleep and slipped away one-by-one.